The Battle of the Book Behemoths

Like just about every other reader on the planet, I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of the last instalment in Hilary Mantel's Cromwell Trilogy, The Mirror and the Light. Unlike many others, I have the somewhat daunting distinction of not having read any of them. Yes, knowing from the outset that it would be told over the course of three books, I decided to wait until they'd all been published then go at them as one. While that sounds kind of piggish and silly (and I admit it is), at least I didn't quite do what a friend of mine did, holding off for all the Knausgaard books to be translated before embarking on them (he even toyed with learning Norwegian as it would probably be quicker). What I hadn't anticipated, of course, is quite how long each book would be. Wolf Hall kicked things off with 675 pages. Bring Up the Bodies was a relative novella at 432. And now... gulp... along comes The Mirror and the Light, which breaks the scales at over 900 pages. So that's about twenty-four billion pages I have ahead of me, in a single sequential stretch.

Not that I'm complaining. It is, however, indicative of a very clear trend: the big book is well and truly back. I say this as I'm halfway through Colm McCann's new novel, Apeirogon (a mind-bending addition to the "i" before "e" except after "c" rule exceptions), which, at 457 pages, is seriously hurting my wrist. Meanwhile, Yaniv Iczkovits's incredible novel, The Slaughterman's Daughter, has also finally found its way to the English-speaking world in what, I must say, is one of the most stunning aesthetic carapaces I've seen in just about forever. That's another 500 pages (every one of which I relished last year when I read it in proof form). And so they keep coming. Just look at my bookshelf!

I have yet to brave Krasznahorkai's brick. And I'm dying to read Tyll, after all the raves it's been getting. So much for my annual tally clocking 200 books. Maybe I need to shift to page counts instead!

The Books That Made Me Vol. 1: I Am The Cheese by Robert Cormier

Mr. Grey was guilty. That much I knew. I stood at the front of the class, near Ms. Rapke's desk, and clutched the cue cards in my sweaty hands. The notes were scrawled in tiny script; I would barely have been able to read them, even if the ink hadn't smudged. Twenty pairs of eyes - tenth graders, precariously hanging from the cliff of childhood, set to fall at any moment; judgemental, cynical - all on me. It had come to this: my closing address.

Three weeks earlier, I begrudgingly picked up the book, fully prepared to hate it. The year was 1991, and Mt Scopus College was still in that late-80s miasma of literary staleness. The texts they forced us to read for English sucked, completely removed from our experience as teens. Indeed, I went back and reread most of them for this blog a few years back, hoping to discover that I was just too immature to appreciate them at the time. I was, after all, a dickhead as a kid. Alas, nope. I was right. They did suck. All of which is to say that I came to this book with close to no expectations, other than having had my interest slightly piqued by something Ms. Rapke said on the first day: At the end, we will be holding a trial. That was it. No details.

So began what has become a lifelong love affair with Robert Cormier's YA masterpiece I Am The Cheese (if you preferred The Chocolate War you are, of course, wrong). It may not be my favourite book of all time, but it's the one that I have read more than any other. I make a point of reading it at least once a year (I'd say I've now read it over thirty times), to remind me what it is like to be awakened to the potential of the novel as a form. It is my personal madeleine, a mnemonic that instantly transports me back to those few weeks in Year 10, but also a revelation: I find something new, something jaw-droppingly brilliant on each new reading. There is little by way of plot description that could do it justice. Adam Farmer is cycling to Rutterberg, Vermont to deliver a parcel to his father. Along the way he encounters various people and landmarks, all slightly eerie and unsettling. Something is not right. Interspersed between the chapters are transcripts of interviews. At first it seems he is undergoing some kind of therapy following a traumatic event. Brint, his interlocutor, is gentle, caring but disturbingly probing. It's as if he has an agenda. As the story progresses we learn that Adam is the only survivor of a car accident that killed his family. And that when it happened they were on the run. Adam's father was a journalist who uncovered and reported on a huge corruption scandal. Organised crime was implicated, but so too was the government. The family went into witness protection. Their handler was a man Adam knew as Mr. Grey. He visited regularly, whisking Adam's father into the basement where they speak in whispers. As Adam pieces together the fragments of his family's past, as his reality begins to drop out from under him, we are also forced to rethink everything we've read. Who is Brint? What is the purpose of these interviews? Could it be that Adam - whose real name we learn towards the middle of the book - might yet be the final victim?

I Am The Cheese is many things: structurally innovative, perfectly plotted, daring (for a book written in 1977, it sure was willing to ask some difficult questions about power) and a lot of fun. It also has a twist that is so astonishing, so deftly executed, that I can't help but think it remains a major cultural influence. I wouldn't be surprised if it was lingering in the backs of the minds of those who wrote The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense and even Fight Club (yes, I know that was Pahlaniuk). I can only imagine how it must have felt back in 1977, when readers didn't routinely question the reliability of their narrators.

Back to the classroom. The trial ran over two English periods, an hour and a half in all. Ms. Rapke was the judge. Other students played the roles of Mr. Grey, Adam and the defence lawyer. Guilt was to be decided by popular vote, in a show-of-hands poll of the rest of the class. I spent days honing my skills, watching Twelve Angry Men, LA Law and, the latest upstart in the world of legal drama, Law & Order. I cross-examined Mr. Grey, who did a barely passable job of inhabiting the character, with a fire this book had ignited in me; one that would carry on for the rest of my school days and ultimately launch me into a legal career, albeit one on the defence side of the criminal law fence. But it was the closing argument that sealed the deal. I had spent so long examining the book, finding the clues and the incriminating evidence that, should you pay close enough attention, is there to be found, that there was no room for doubting that not only was Mr. Grey responsible for the deaths of Adam's parents, but he was also planning to kill Adam. Ms. Rapke put it to the class: Who thought Mr. Grey did it? A brief moment of inaction. Silence. I don't think I could breathe. Then the hands went up. Every single one of them. His fate was sealed. And so was mine.

I read I Am The Cheese again this week and fell in love with it all over again. To think what the right book can awaken in a kid. And the right teacher. How lucky I was to have had Ms. Rapke. And Mrs. Auster, Ms. Swaitlo and Mrs. Jensen, all of whom encouraged my crazy love for the written word. Some of whom read the many extra stories I gave them each Monday after a weekend locked away in my room (me, not my teachers). Some of whom gave me books from their own collections, books they thought I'd like. To think, without them, and without Mr. Cormier, I might have become a corporate lawyer. Perish the thought.

PS Andrew Saffer, if you're reading this, I still have your copy. It was a twenty-eight year loan, yeah?

Microviews Vol. 60: Nelson, Ciment, Vermes,

The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson
Maggie Nelson has been hovering on my reading periphery for a few years now. So many people I know adore her and her mega-hit, The Argonauts. But it was a personal recommendation from a friend whose taste I greatly respect (and mostly share hehe) that finally got me to pick up one of her books. And holy moly was she right! The Red Parts is, not to put too fine a point on it, a work of genius. Its back story alone deserves an entire book: Nelson had just published a cycle of poems about her murdered aunt, Jane, when she got word that the case had been reopened and an arrest made. It was long believed that, despite significant differences in MO, Jane was killed by John Collins, aka the Michigan Murderer. A chance DNA match, almost 40 years after the fact, proved otherwise. The Red Parts is a breathtaking deconstruction of the trial that followed calling into question the legal process and its players, as well as family lore, memory and criminal responsibility. It is personable, personal and engaging while also being intellectually rigorous and satisfying. Needless to say I’m a convert. I’ve already ordered Bluets.
5 Hooks

The Body in Question by Jill Ciment
In the few years I practised as a criminal lawyer, I was constantly intrigued by jury dynamics. The more I watched them, the deeper the curiosity became, all the more so because I knew that, simply by virtue of having studied and practised law, I was disqualified from ever experiencing it first hand. Gone were my fantasies of pulling a Henry Fonda and swaying eleven of my “peers” to the side of justice. We’re a good few years down the track now but the feeling remains. What the hell goes on back there when “we” can’t see them? For jurors C-2 and F-17 in Jill Ciment’s excellent novel, the answer is simple: lots of sex. Caught up in an affair that is fuelled in equal parts by boredom, the fear of ageing and the simple reality of throwing a bunch of people into a closed, isolated environment, the two take every opportunity to bonk, hoping the others won’t catch on. As it happens, there’s a murder trial going on, too. And what they take to be a private matter is quickly discovered, throwing the whole trial into jeopardy. As tawdry as it all sounds, Ciment is subtle in her execution, and The Body In Question is a surprisingly perceptive study of loneliness, attraction, guilt and social responsibility.
4 Hooks

The Hungry and the Fat by Timur Vermes
Debuts don’t come much more audacious than Timur Vermes’s satirical masterpiece, Look Who’s Back. Inexplicably plonking Hitler back in contemporary Germany and charting his meteoric rise to reality TV superstardom, Vermes managed to stick a mighty big skewer through German politics, the worldwide obsession with celebrity, and the ever-present willingness to disregard morality when it clashes with personal convenience. It’s a bloody funny book, all the more so for how true it all rings. Now, with the considerable weight of expectation on his shoulders, Vermes returns with The Hungry and the Fat, a book that does not pack quite the same punch as his first but still has a lot of uncomfortably funny things to say. Nadeche Hackenbusch - model, TV presenter and queen of the vacuous platitude - has landed in quiet the pickle. Despite great ratings, her white saviour wet dream of a reality TV show, Angel In Adversity is about to be canned. She’s still in Africa’s largest refugee camp and has grown rather fond of her ‘co-stars’. In particular, a certain young chap called Lionel has stolen her heart (and her marriage). Together, they plan the ultimate stunt - to lead the refugees on foot to Germany. It’s positively biblical! Cue apoplexy from all sides. The TV execs scramble to work out how best to follow the exodus. Leaders of countries along the path roll out the heavy defences. German politicians of every shade go into meltdown - can they stop the influx without seeming callous/weak? The people smugglers shift into overdrive. It’s like watching the biggest clusterfuck train wreck unfold in slow motion. The Hungry and the Fat is a big book in both ambition and actual size (it pushes 600 pages), and Vermes gives each narrative enough rope to hang itself in spectacular fashion. I didn’t get the same thrill as I did reading Look Who’s Back, and there was some pretty odd geopolitical commentary towards the end that did not sit well with me, but there is no doubting Vermes’s satirical flair. Could he be the Jonathan Swift of our times?
4 Hooks

2020: A Visual Book Diary Vol. 1

I've always struggled to keep track of all the books I read. I used to keep a list but stupidly saved it on a local drive and, when the computer went kaput, it took ten years of reading data with it. Goodreads is a pretty decent way to keep track, but I tend to read a fair few manuscripts and also forget to add a bunch of published books because I'm a) lazy and b) a technophobe. This year, I've decided to hit the issue two ways. Firstly (and obviously), I'm starting the spreadsheet thing again but saving it to my Dropbox. But, let's be honest, there will come a day that I forget to pay for my renewal and I'm going to lose everything again. It's how I roll. Secondly, I thought it might be nice to keep a visual diary of sorts by lining up the books on a shelf as I read them. That way, I can take a pic every couple of months and see how the year is progressing.

So here we go: the 9th of January, five books in, this is the first entry in my visual book diary (ignore the back row - I'm at the dreaded double shelving stage of my book collecting). Yes, it's been a great start. Some reviews coming soon!

2020: A New, Red Dawn

Of the many ways I'd thought about opening this first post of a reinvigorated blog, this was not one of them: My country is on fire. My city, far from the flames, has been blanketed in smoke. Pictures from some of the burning towns look nothing short of apocalyptic. Hell, even my bayside suburb, usually glorious and vibrant at this time of year, looks like a scene from a disaster movie. Through it all, I've mostly locked myself inside and read. Six days in and I'm onto my sixth book for the year. Like many city folk in Australia, I've felt helpless and despondent. And useless. Until today.

With mad props to Emily Gale, Nova Weetman and others, the Australian (and now international) writing community has mobilised to raise money for the Country Fire Association (the roof body for the volunteer country fire fighters in each state). If you head over to Twitter right now and follow the hashtag #AuthorsForFireys (Fireys is Aussie slang for firefighters), you can see a whole array of amazing items being auctioned off for the cause. There are signed books, manuscript appraisals, AMAs, the chance to have characters named after you in your favourite author's next book, special handmade book-related knick knacks... you name it. Literally every author and book industry person I know is getting involved and it's magnificent. Personally, I've bid on a cartoon portrait of my dog, an original typed draft of a story by Josephine Rowe and the chance to have a ferret in the wonderful RWR McDonald's next book named after me, in honour of my beloved (and much-missed) ferret, Spaekk.

I'm also getting on board with a special package of book related stuff that includes:

- An inscribed copy of The Book of Dirt
- A signed Chinese edition of The Book of Dirt
- A copy of the new Text Classics edition of Arnold Zable's incredible novel Cafe Scheherazade, to which I have written the introduction, signed by Arnold and me
- A curated collection of my Top 5 novels of all time
- Two unpublished short stories
- The first two chapters of my latest work-in-progress (a pretty surreal novella)
Plus I will be matching the winning bid dollar for dollar.

All #AuthorsForFireys auctions run until 11pm AEST on Saturday January 11.

At the moment the highest bid for my lot is at a staggering $700. I genuinely cannot believe it. If you want to get involved, or check out all the other incredible things on offer, be sure to jump on Twitter and search the hashtag.

These are pretty scary, shitty times. But at least I feel a bit better knowing how beautiful and generous the reading and writing community can be. Sending much love, strength and hope to those on the frontline.

Check back soon when I'll be returning to regular programming.

2019 In Review: And The Winner Is...

Well, this is a first. A non-fiction book? Only 80 pages? Who even am I? In what turned out to be a pretty good reading year for me - 129 books (dammit I hate not finishing on a round number) - it was Édouard Louis's tiny gem that stood out from all the others. Sure, it might be short, but what it lacks in length it more than makes up for with an abundance of depth, heart and rage. Those familiar with Louis's previous two books will no doubt have expected something incendiary and urgent, but what might surprise readers is just how tender this book is. Gone is the artifice of autofiction. Who Killed My Father is straight-up memoir, which Louis deftly uses to build towards a jaw-dropping J'Accuse-style denouement.

It begins with Louis returning to the dull, depressed town in which he grew up, to visit his dying father. The two have had a fraught relationship; Louis is a prodigiously talented, gay firebrand. His father is thoroughly working class, a product (and victim) of the crushing machinery of French capitalism. For a long time he simply couldn't understand or accept his son. Through reflections on his childhood and teen years, as well as the visit itself, Louis charts the steady decline of a proud man. It is a sad, painful march towards what could be ultimately viewed as a meaningless death.

What might have been a wholly glum undertaking is lifted to the realm of high art by Louis's ability to find courage and dignity in his father's ordinary existence. And, in a transformation that might strikes some readers as surreal as Gregor Samsa's (it's worth noting that this almost reads like a counterpoint to Kafka's Letter To My Father), Louis's dad rises above his unsophisticated prejudices to love his son, and genuinely try to understand him. Louis, in turn, comes to understand and appreciate his father.

All of this alone would have made Who Killed My Father an incredible book. Louis, however, is not satisfied to leave his father's sad fate unaccounted for. And so we are treated to the most ferocious, intellectually satisfying and downright brilliant critique of the French class structure that you're likely to encounter. It's worth noting that the title does not end with a question mark. Louis isn't trying to discover who killed his father. He knows. The book, therefore, is an indictment, and a damning one at that. These are not words. They are lightning bolts. The last few pages had me crying with rage, and sobbing at the pure act of love all I had read represented. There aren't many books I can say changed the way I think about the world. This is one of them.

Happy New Year everyone. Here's hoping 2020 brings our world a little closer to decency, kindness and justice.

2019 In Review: The Final Countdown

Crack out the sparklers, I'm vertical again. And I'm not sure if it's just the painkillers speaking or just how I always get when it comes to writing down my Top Ten but I feel like jumping up and down on a couch with excitement Tom Cruise style as I announce my favourite books of the year. But, let's face it, I'd probably put my back out again so I'll just sit here and type as usual.

10. The Trespassers by Meg Mundell
Have you ever wondered what Hitchcock might have made of Camus or Saramago if given half the chance? Me too! Well, I reckon the answer might lie in Meg Mundell's fantastic new novel, The Trespassers. It's spec fic awesomeness is abundance, where paranoia, claustrophobia and murder run rampant on the high seas and sharp social commentary simmers between the lines. As a highly original take on important issues like refugee policy, xenophobia, environmental degradation and corporate greed, The Trespassers really has it all. An excellent, layered novel that is an absolute ripper to read.

9. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak
Ferocious, complex and deeply humane, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World is an extraordinary work of protest fiction. Shafak has a remarkable ability to empathise with her characters who, for the most part, dwell on the margins of Turkish society. As such, her meditation on the "disposability" of certain classes of people is nothing short of an excoriation. Finishing this book left me bereft, even with the sweet glimmer of beauty at its end. I still think it should have won the Booker.

8. The Parade by Dave Eggers
I blow hot and cold with Eggers. But the moment I saw this on the release horizon I had high hopes. Set in an unidentified, lawless country, it follows two Western contractors hired to clear a path to the capital. It's mostly a record of repartee between two completely unsuited companions, but there is something sinister lying underneath. An urgently modern fable, with lashings of Beckett and Kafka, an undercurrent of Kadare and a fistful of, well, Eggers, it drew me in only to punch me square in the jaw. With my favourite closing paragraph of the year, The Parade is easily Eggers's best work since What Is The What.

7. Bloomland by John Englehardt
Bloomland is a stunningly masterful reckoning of contemporary America. Innovative in the way it is told, perceptive in its understanding of desperation, grief and anger, and unadorned by cheap gimmickery (I'm looking at you, Shriver), I genuinely cannot think of a better novel about the scourge of school shootings than Bloomland.

6. Lanny by Max Porter
Like almost everyone who read Porter's extraordinary debut, Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, I was very excited to see how he'd follow it up. Grief was such a singular work, its style unique and confounding in the best possible way, but it was also short. Could Porter sustain this kind of magic over the length of a novel? In a move that seemed almost tailored to my taste, what he gave us was a folk tale; a fable that deconstructs the form with its own traditional tools. Lanny is a breathtaking work of the imagination, rendered with stylistic gusto.

5. A Devil Comes To Town by Paulo Maurensig
Lampooning the world of writers and writing might seem like shooting fish in a barrel, but it's bloody hard to pull off successfully. I can count on one hand the literary satires that really work - The Information by Martin Amis, um... um... At last I can add a second to the list with this incredibly funny, oddball tale. The conceit itself is a riot: a rural town in which everyone is a writer working on their manuscript, desperately hoping to be published, is visited by the devil in the form of a big city publisher. Petty rivalries spill over, jealousy abounds and each writer demeans him or herself worse than the last. It's absolutely absurd but, dare I say, it's also scarily accurate. Read it and weep with laughter.

4. Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg
Goldberg follows up her international bestseller, Bee Season, with this morally complex story of art, motherhood and ambition. Based loosely on a true story, and set against the restrictive social mores of post-War America, it charts the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of photographer Lillian Preston. Goldberg brilliantly presents it as the catalog to a posthumous exhibition at MOMA, annotated with recollections from her friends, lovers, curators and, of course, her daughter, naked childhood photos of whom precipitated the fall. A beautifully challenging, but ultimately redemptive and moving read.

3. The Death of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee
A crushingly sad, yet hugely triumphant finale to Coetzee's Jesus trilogy. I think it took me until about halfway through this third book to finally understand his grand project, and wow is it a deep, existential one. Of course, I may be wrong - taken together, the three books are remarkably enigmatic - but I think he is asking this: Stripped of the things that we consider fundamental to personhood - a name, an identity, a home, family, friends, language, control over our minds and bodies, longevity, community, etc. - is there some intrinsic value in having lived? I'm not entirely certain of his answer, but it is clearly the profound fixation of somebody grappling with his own legacy as he reaches his later years. How might he be remembered? By who? And for what purpose? These are vexing questions for someone who, like Coetzee, has made a point of living a moral, activist life. That said, it might do well for anyone who dares wonder if their life was worthwhile to ask the same. Let's just hope that, as Coetzee might be obliquely suggesting, it's not some quixotic folly to suppose we've mattered at all

2. EEG by Daša Drndić
Could this be the most searing swan song ever written? Andreas Ban has failed to kill himself (you may remember Belladonna closing with his apparent suicide), and so his misanthropic disdain has only intensified. Sick, exhausted and pissed off, he continues to rail against everything and everyone he hates, while trying to wrench the faceless, nameless victims - those who history usually forgets - from the abyss of memory. Drndić, who died last year, bids us farewell (read: gives us the middle finger) with a veritable evisceration of our species' propensity for barbarity, brimming with the moral ferocity, dark humour and panoramic history readers have come know and love (or should I say fear?). A dense, unflinching masterpiece.

2019 In Review: Some Books I Loved (Part 2)

Greetings from the very Tiger Balmy sickbed! Turns out 2019 gave us a great crop of books. I wasn't expecting this list to be so long and I'm not even down to my Top 10. I still hope to read four or five books before the year is out so the list might grow yet. But for now, here's a bunch more books I loved this year.

The Diver's Game by Jesse Ball
Jesse Ball can do no wrong and here he out Attwoods Attwood with a terrifyingly plausible take on an alternative present. For fans, think of it as a companion of sorts to The Curfew.

Doggerland by Ben Smith
I haven't delved into the whole cli-fi thang anywhere near as much as I'd like to, but from my limited experience I have to say, Doggerland is bloody excellent. Bleak, propulsive, frightening and eerily believable, it had an almost Cormac McCarthyesque darkness in the relationship between the three characters. One of very few books that I literally could not put down. Also, I couldn't help but wonder whether this is what Waterworld might have been like if it that steaming shit-heap of a film had actually been good.

Space Invaders by Nona Fernández
I have a strange obsession with The Disappearances and this is one of the most beautiful and moving stories about that terrible time in Chile's history I've read. Centred around a group of children who remember a classmate who one day stops turning up to school, and the infamous Caso Degollados case, it frames the horrors from a child's perspective, giving the whole thing a wide-eyed clarity that more worldly, jaded narratives simply could not. Gorgeous and chilling.

Halibut On The Moon by David Vann
Several harrowing, soul-crushingly bleak and excruciatingly intense novels down the line, we might just have hit "Peak Vann". Halibut On The Moon sees this master of the existential abyss coming full circle, revisiting the event that inspired his incredible first novel-in-stories, Legend of A Suicide, and shaded all those that followed. Imagining the final few days of his father's life, days that we as readers already know will end in suicide, Vann demonstrates unparalleled insight into a mind tumbling over the edge. That he is able to mine such deeply personal trauma is remarkable. That he does it to such great effect, without melodrama, judgement or self-pity, is truly extraordinary.

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy
At this point in her career, Deborah Levy really can't do any wrong and this, in my opinion, is her best novel yet. It's high concept sliding doors as historical stocktake. Read it to see just how exciting contemporary literature can be.

Exquisite Cadavers by Meena Kandasamy
Speaking of exciting, this little novel absolutely blew me away with its structural innovation, smashing down the wall between the author and the work they produce. Exquisite Cadavers is a dual narrative. Its primary (imagined) story is about Karim, a Tunisian immigrant, and Maya, his English wife. Struggling to make ends meet, and in the face of constant casual racism, theirs is a love circumscribed by the realities of Brexit-era London. Meanwhile, in the margins, Kandasamy tells her own story of writing the book, giving us a glimpse into the way her own life and observations - particularly of the abysmal treatment of women, political dissidents and minorities in Modi's India - inform Karim and Maya's story. Absolutely astounding.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
I was hand sold this by a local bookseller who knows my taste and thought that, even though I don't read a great deal of science fiction, I'd love it. To Be Taught, If Fortunate is a series of linked stories about Adriane, an intergalactic explorer who finds a different planet/system in each chapter. Unsurprisingly, each is significantly different and brings new, often morally challenging, considerations to her voyage. What makes the book brilliant though is what's going on in the background. As the stories progress, Chambers drops little hints that things on earth aren't going quite so well and that Adriane just might be the last person alive. A quite ingenious book and an excellent illustration of why it's worth getting to know your local booksellers. Hi Grumpy Swimmer!

Call Me Evie by JP Pomare
It's been a long time between drinks for me when it comes to reading a thriller but I'm pretty damn happy this was the one that broke the drought. Dark, propulsive, sinister and downright great fun.

Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom by Ariel Burger
We are all familiar with Elie Wiesel the great Holocaust survival novelist, Nobel Laureate and humanitarian activist. Yet Wiesel considered himself first and foremost a teacher. Burger, who was Wiesel's teaching assistant for several years, gives us unparalleled insight into this aspect of the great man's life. It is a deeply moving account of a mentorship that evolves into friendship, full of touching personal reflections and important lessons from a master.

The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
Is it possible for a book to be propelled almost entirely by the quality of its writing? Strip away the lyrical splendour of The Topeka School and you've got the story of a nerdy high school debater and two shitty marriages (his parents and their friends). Ok, I'm being somewhat reductive - there are issues of small town dynamics, the pressure of having "famous" parents (or being that parent), and the genesis of childhood violence - but still... Now, back to the writing. Holy shit, is Ben Lerner the most effortless prose stylist of the modern generation? Seriously, this book could have been about moss growing in a cave and, in his hands, it would still have been better than most of the books I've read this year

Well that just about covers them all. Next up, the Top Ten. But before I do, a quick shout out to two albums that I just discovered and that were too late to make my list of favourites for the year. I'm absolutely loving the new Reaganomics album, The Ageing Punk. A total explosion of fun, even if it does hit a little close to home.

Also, Moon Tiger released Crux back in August and I totally missed it. Thanks to a few Top 10 lists I've been reading over the past few days I went and checked it out. Wow. Think Scurrilous-era Protest the Hero, but a bit more fun and proggy. Definitely one of my best new discoveries of the year. Awe At All Angels has fast become one of my favourite songs of the year.

2019 In Review: Some Books I Loved (Part 1)

Well, I've fucked my back in Singapore which is making this holiday far less festive than I'd anticipated. On the upside, it's allowed me plenty of time to consider the books I've loved over the past 12 months and cobble together something resembling a Top 10 for the year. As usual, that will come in the last couple of days of the month. One thing that struck me while going over my list (124 books and counting) is that there were quite a few novels I really dug but can't include in the final countdown (dada da daaa dada dadada). With that in mind, I thought I'd do some extra posts to crap on about them. Apologies to those of you who are friends on mine on Goodreads because I'll mostly just be copying and pasting my reviews from there. But hey, I'm hurting over here, and the best I can do is channel eight-year-old me with scissors and a stick of glue. Note: As there were a lot of books I liked, I'm dividing this over two posts.

The Nancys by RWR McDonald
An absolute delight from the very start, The Nancys took me back to my days of obsessively devouring crime fiction. Not only is it a good old fashioned murder mystery of the exact kind I have always loved, but it possesses a genuine warmth and laugh-out-loud humour not often associated with the genre. I'll avoid any plot description so I don't stumble into spoiler territory but, gotta say, I loved it.

A Mistake by Carl Shuker
I picked this excellent little novel up on a recent trip to New Zealand and, wow, what a great read. A smart, unsentimental look at the fallibility of those who we, quite literally, trust with our lives. A Mistake could easily veered into the realm of melodrama but Shuker avoids the sensational to look at the human impact, as well as the frantic arse-covering of the bureaucratic machine that turns the health care engine.

The Trap by Ludovic Bruckstein
Bruckstein might just be the least known of the Holocaust survivor novelists. That he has languished for years on the outer is a travesty. The Trap is a disorientating, cleverly constructed gem of a novella, with a twist at once hilarious and heartbreaking. The second novella, The Rag Doll, is more conventional in style but is no less moving. It is also, sadly, very timely. In many ways it reminded me of the two Hanses - Keilson and Fallada. If you dig them, Bruckstein is a must.

Lucky Ticket by Joey Bui
I was fortunate enough to blurb this extraordinary debut and, while I could go on for hours about it, I'll simply add that you have to read it. It's bloody great (apparently "bloody great" is frowned upon as wording for a cover quote).

Dawn by Selahattin Demirtas A truly incandescent work of prison literature, this story collection soars not for its insight into the life of a political prisoner (there isn't much of that at all) but for its near perfect ability to see into the souls of the regular people whose stories it tells. From the light touch of magical realism where pigeons converse with men in a prison yard, to the brutal realism of the title story (quite possibly the best albeit most harrowing thing I've ever read about so-called honour killings), Dawn is just flawless tale after flawless tale. Astounding.

Wolfe Island by Lucy Treloar
Astounding in its ability to both touch and unsettle, Wolfe Island is a rain dance beneath the clouds of the Apocalypse.

The Hollow Bones by Leah Kaminsky
From the embers of history, Kaminsky weaves a cracking tale of adventure, competing loyalties and the folly of sacrificing reason on the ideological altar.

You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr
I'd heard a lot of good things about You Will Be Safe Here and was worried that I might be disappointed when I finally got around to reading it. How wrong I was! Harrowing in what it depicts but beautiful in the way it does so, this exceeded my expectation. A morally complex window into silenced histories (I knew only a little about the Boer Wars and nothing about the SA Conversion Camps), in which Barr avoids the temptation to tie up loose ends for the sake of comforting the reader. Great book, brilliantly executed.

Invisible Boys by Holden Sheppard
Well, hasn't YA lit changed since my day? And for the far, far better. It's hard to add to the raves that keep getting heaped upon Invisible Boys so I'll have to settle with reiterating them. Yes, it's blisteringly good. Yes, it's fucking real. Yes, it repeatedly punches you in the guts. Yes, it's ALL THE FEELS AT ONCE. Oh, and most definitely yes, it's genuinely IMPORTANT. But most of all I adored it for the beautiful things it says about love, friendship, family, finding yourself and the embarrassing clumsiness (whether we like to admit it or not) of being a teenager.

Thumb Wrestling a Paper Giant: The Decade in Review (Part 2)

Only a few days left so I figured I better get my shit together and finish this countdown. I've spent the last few days incessantly juggling the order of the Top 10 and, really, but for the top three there could have been any permutation of what's below. So, here they are: my ten favourite books of the... um... I still have no clue what it's called. Bring on the 20s!

10. The Jesus Trilogy by J.M. Coetzee (2013/2016/2019)
Okay, okay. I know I'm cheating here. But it wasn't until I'd read the final instalment that I came to understand Coetzee's greater project with his Jesus books and I now consider it impossible to view them individually. Indeed, if you do, The Childhood of Jesus (the first salvo) really collapses in the second half and wouldn't stand a chance of making this list on its own. Viewed as a whole, however, it's truly breathtaking and completely puts to rest fears that he had somehow diminished after moving to Australia. Using the surreal fable form that made Waiting For the Barbarians so incredible, Coetzee lands a hefty blow to the soul with this examination of life's true value. The Schooldays of Jesus reads like a philosophical murder mystery and The Death of Jesus rivals any of the great existential novels of yesteryear. Think Sartre's Roads to Freedom trilogy but more magical, timeless and, dare I say better. Read as one, I now suspect Jesus might be Coetzee's masterpiece.

9. What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell (2016)
My 2016 Book of the Year, Garth Greenwell's What Belongs To You is an unrelenting, lustful, homoerotic carnival of obsession and sacrifice. Kicking off with a tawdry quick fuck in the toilet cubicle of Bulgaria's National Museum of Culture, it follows the unnamed narrator's descent into near-madness as he falls for Mitko, an opportunistic rent boy who swans in and out of his life. It might seem an unlikely setup for an insightful examination of the modern human condition but let's face it, we all live in a world of anomie and unfulfilled desire. And Greenwell demonstrates a capacity for profound understanding that most philosophers would kill to possess. His new book, Cleanness comes out soon and promises to "revisit and expand" the world of his debut and I, for one, could not be more excited!

8. The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers (2012)
There have been some great war novels in the last ten years, the majority having been written by returned soldiers. Phil Klay's Redeployment (ok, it's short stories but whatever), Roy Scranton's War Porn and David Abrams's Fobbit immediately spring to mind. But none shook my soul like Kevin Powers's incendiary debut. The Yellow Birds draws on his own life as a poet and active soldier to craft a riveting tale of one man's struggle to come to terms with the death of his friend during service in Iraq. Not a single war cliche pollutes the perfect prose. The emotion is raw, the anger palpable, the depth of humanity staggering. Check out my original review here.

7. Melisande! What Are Dreams by Hillel Halkin (2012)
Another quiet book that has firmly lodged itself in my heart, Melisande! What Are Dreams? is a book that seems to have been mostly overlooked but thoroughly deserves to be considered a classic. It is, to my knowledge, the only novel written by the acclaimed translator of the Hebrew and Yiddish greats, and one that he wrote quite late in the game. Little surprise then that it is so deeply imbued with the kind of cultural and literary intelligence that very few debut novelists could ever muster. A melancholic story of a marriage in decline, Melisande! What Are Dreams? is one of the most tender meditations on the nature of human relations that I have ever read.

6. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez (2018)
By now the story behind Nunez's National Prize-winning breakthrough is well known. A distinguished, decades-long career of consistently excellent but commercially unremarkable novels and then, suddenly, she's heralded an overnight success. As I wrote in the previous post (I only read it this year), The Friend is all the feels you could hope to find in a book. The story of a woman who is left to care for her friend and mentor's oversized dog after the friend's suicide, it is in turns tragic and funny but always warm and insightful. There is a mind-bending twist, so cleverly executed that it spoils nothing to mention it here; only to note that it is a moment of true narrative genius. I can see myself returning to The Friend over the years like one would a favourite song.

5. The Town by Shaun Prescott (2017)
A debut novel published by a small local press, The Town might just be my favourite Australian novel of all time. It's hard to describe this surreal masterpiece in a way that comes close to doing it justice. Suffice to say, this story of an unnamed writer working on a book about disappearing towns who turns up to a small unnamed town just as bits of it begin to disappear, ranks up there in the pantheon of brilliantly absurd works by Kafka, Bernhard and Borges. Picked up by Faber in the UK and FSG in America (it is finally getting released in 2020), it was my 2017 Book of the Year and came very close to being my favourite of the decade. Check out my Book of the Year citation here.

4. Dept of Speculation by Jenny Offill (2014)
It's funny looking back over my top ten lists from each year and thinking that, while I didn't get the order wrong at the time, some books have edged their way up in my memory such that they have lasted in a way that others on the same list simply have not. In 2014, Jenny Offill's masterpiece in miniature landed at number five. Half a decade later and it remains a book that I treasure more so than most that were above it. This autopsy of an ordinary failed marriage is so exquisitely rendered that I melt every time I spare it a thought (which, I should add is often - basically, I'm 60% puddle). Not a wasted word to be found. Check out my original review here.

3. The Infatuations by Javier Marias (2011/13)
When was the last time you read a novel that you thought was worthy of being held up alongside the traditional classics? Marias's sprawling story of love, friendship, death and mourning was my 2013 Book of the Year and probably stands as the most distinguished of the decade. It is a big book, both in size and substance, but one that is endlessly rewarding. As I said when I first reviewed it, it's the only time I've had an inkling of how it might have felt to be alive when Crime and Punishment or A Tale of Two Cities were first published, Oh, and Marias should have won the Nobel before Handke. Just saying.

2. Trieste by Daša Drndić (2012)
If I had to name the book that had the greatest impact on me as a writer and influenced the way I viewed literature, it would unquestionably be Daša Drndić's unrelenting revelation of a novel, Trieste. Framed as the reminiscences of an old woman waiting for a son she had long thought dead, it expands endlessly into a kaleidoscopic overview of 20th century horrors. Structurally innovative, encyclopaedic in knowledge and unflinching in its indictment of human depravity, Trieste proved Drndić the true master (yes, above Sebald) of the documentary fictional form. If this list were about literary achievement alone, Trieste would be my definite number one. It most certainly was my Book of the Year for 2012, the best year for fiction in the entire decade. I only wish she was still here to laugh at me saying all this. Check out my Book of the Year citation here.

1. Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball (2014)
I expect it comes as a big surprise to just about nobody that Jesse Ball would have written my favourite book of the decade. Hell, he was responsible for three of my books of the year (2011, 2014 and 2018). Of those, it was Silence Once Begun that I've picked as the greatest, a bona fide work of staggering genius (sorry, DE) that pays homage to Abe and Endo then transcends them both. The central conceit - a man walks into a police station and confesses to a string of disappearances (and, one is made to assume, murders) before consigning himself to absolute silence. Thus he remains throughout questioning, throughout trial, after conviction, all the way to execution. And se we hear the "testimony" of other players in the story, some likeable, some sinister, all with varying degrees of reliability. You can check out my original review here but, seriously, get off your computer and read the novel instead. Silence Once Begun is the distillation of all that is great about Jesse Ball, and cemented him as the single most exciting novelist of our times. If you haven't read it you pretty much wasted the... um... Jesus Christ can someone just tell me what we called that decade?